Just another day...: Redding memories

I left Redding in 1986 to go to college and returned throughout the years during holidays and summer vacations. The home I left on Keswick Dam Road was lived in for nearly 40 years until July 26, 2018, the evening the Carr Fire blew up and wiped out over 1,000 homes on the west side of town. It is nothing compared to the Camp Fire that is currently burning not 100 miles away and that has destroyed 10,000 homes/structures and counting.

There are so many memories I have of the house I came of age in, and returned to again and again bringing my children to play with childhood toys like the alphabet block ride-on truck, table hockey game, Sears Brix Blox, and Tinkertoys. The Fisher Price Little People items were a favorite - house, school, bus, airport, village sets with people, pets, furniture, cars, planes, helicopters all gone. I loved the village mail truck with plastic "letters" to deliver and the airport baggage truck trailing carts with luggage. My sister and I made up so many little dialogs to have with the dentist, teacher, and various other residents as we played. Play is not nearly the same in the digital age.

There were books lost that stung. My parents both loved to read, thus instilling my love of reading. Lost in the fire were hard-cover series of Cherry Ames mysteries and Bobbsey Twins adventures that my mom purchased with her hard-earned money in her younger years. I lament the loss of a much-read illustrated children's encyclopedia set that was a source of knowledge in those pre-internet days. I was a prolific reader and won a prize in 4th grade for reading just about everything in my grade school library. Ironically, it was a book - of stories for children. I wish I remembered the inscription.

My mom lost sentimental wearable items - bridesmaids dresses, tailored cheongsams from her first visit to Hong Kong in the 50s, classic baby blue Converse One Stars, and a few suits and dresses from when she first started working in NYC in the 60s among them. Then there were some of my dad's old suits, sport coats, and sweaters she had kept after he passed away. There were items I left behind in a dresser purchased when I was a baby - hand crocheted vests made by my paternal grandma, prom dresses, letterman's jacket, track team tees, and a tee with the first logo of the fledgling Chinese Students' Association of UC Santa Cruz. I met my husband playing intramural sports on the CSA teams.

Even household furnishings were dear - lost included that baby dresser and a nightstand, a set of two dressers, one for my sister and one for me; the items my parents bought to set up one of their early homes together after marrying in 1966 in, perhaps, my first home, an apartment in Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, or the first my parents owned, 60 Jaffe Street, Staten Island. There was a mid-century starburst clock, hand-made afghan, and furniture built to last - the bedroom set of ebony hardwood including a headboard, dressers and mirror; the dining room, sofa, and side table sets, and the Lazy Boy recliner my dad so loved. There was formal china, silver and silverware, crystal, lead-crystal, and copper-bottom Revere Ware pots and pans received as wedding gifts, unbreakable 70s melamine dishes, Corelle dishes, and early microwave Corningware Grab It bowls and sandwich plates, stainless Oneida silverware, mixing bowls, and measuring cups, and the kitchen canisters holding coffee, tea, sugar and flour.

There was the sewing table with built-in Singer sewing machine, a four-spool serger, a 50s Smith-Corona manual typewriter and adding machine. Cherished were the irreplaceable photo albums and photos in frames, 8mm movie projector and reels documenting my parent's and our early family years, the small leather-wrapped transistor radio, VHS and audio cassettes and machines to play them, the record player and LPs dating from the 50s and 60s as well as those singles on 45s from the eighties, and our first video game console Magnavox Odyssey 2. The not so old items included the Wii I bought my mom so she could exercise using Wii Fit, desktop computers, laptop, and an iPad mini.

In the garage were a Redding built Lemurian Skyway bicycle and an older Schwinn, and lots of Sears Craftsman tools that my dad taught me how to use - building and fixing things, or tinkering around adjusting the carburetor or the timing belt on my first car, a "three-on-a-tree" Toyota Corona Deluxe.

There are undoubtedly more items not remembered as I write, but these are all earthly things... My mom says perhaps the loss is a blessing in disguise saving my sister and I the trouble of going through everything after her demise.

I'm thankful she's well, my mom; matching her birth signs characteristics of Virgo and Year of the Ox. She has set up in a senior independent living apartment for now, and enjoys outings and travel with friends - we'll see what the future holds.